


Lethe

by preussisch_blau



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Food as Metaphor, Gen, I'm really not sure how to tag this, Light Angst, Psychological and Neurological Analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 19:07:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5597470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preussisch_blau/pseuds/preussisch_blau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All memories are, all personality is, are mappings of neurons that, when fired in a specific sequence, create certain effects and actions. Though the fact that Eobard also retains his own self does make compelling argument for the existence of a soul, or some other metaphysical body that also retains the essence of a person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lethe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jujubiest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/gifts).



> The original idea was a much shorter thing about how Eobard grew to like burgers. My brain can apparently _not_ do short and simple. Which is how this went from burgers to, "Well, okay, but have we all considered the psychological implications of stealing someone's body, complete with brain structure?"
> 
> I regret nothing.
> 
> (I also do not have a degree in psychology, nor one in neuroscience, so I'm just going to apologise now for any egregious errors.)

He doesn't feel regret.

Nor does he feel any sense of satisfaction.

All he feels is… off, in a way that he cannot quite put a name to. It's not like wearing poorly fitted clothing, except in the ways that it is, like he's going to rip a seam if he moves the wrong way. It's not like being painfully stretched, tugged by gravity whilst hanging onto a ledge for dear life, except when it is, like he's being pulled in every wrong direction. It's not squeezing, except for how it feels like there's something tightly wrapped around his torso every time he breathes.

It's wrong, wrong, _wrong._ His skin aches, and he clenches his teeth against the sensation, because he has _work_ to do. Dirty work, but there's no one else to do it, and if he leaves evidence of his crime behind… well, his whole plan may unravel before he's even begun to set it into motion.

So Eobard sets to work, dragging the corpse of the real Harrison Wells off the road, far enough into the trees that no random passers-by will see the disturbed earth where he lays this man to rest.

It doesn't particularly _help,_ because moving just reminds him of all the ways this body is _not his._ His movements are clumsy, unused to the longer limbs, the differences in his new frame. The first time he plants his shovel in the dirt and goes to stomp down on it, dig it all the way in, he nearly falls over because his brain says he should have been just a little closer to the ground.

His stomach hits the shovel's handle hard, and he has to force himself to move past the pain and breathlessness quickly. That, at least, is something he need not rely on his _body_ for, just his mind, which has learnt over the years to take far worse blows and keep on moving.

Once he's certain he's figured out his co-ordination enough to not accidentally chop off some toes, he uses some of the precious little speed force he can gather to make quick work of the burial. The longer this takes, after all, the more likely another car might pass by before he's ready to take up the farce of being Harrison Wells.

It's a relief when he finishes disposing of the evidence, and has heard no sign of any other human life near this road.

He doesn't bother too much to be careful when he climbs into the wrecked car. After all, it would be suspicious if, with how utterly the vehicle has been destroyed, he has no injuries on him but a concussion. Though he isn't sure how long any cuts will last once he goes unconscious. His control over the speed force is, by now, good enough that he can slow his healing to a mostly human rate if needs be, but he's never had to maintain that illusion whilst unconscious.

Still, he can't be awake, either, when the wreck is finally discovered. So once he's strapped himself in -terribly awkward doing so when the car is upside down, but he manages-, Eobard takes a deep breath, and channels the last bit of speed force he can find as he slams his head back against the headrest.

* * *

Hearing is always said to be the last sense to go when you die, and the first to return if you're somehow resuscitated. And it's generally believed to apply to unconsciousness as well.

That's not entirely true, in his experience.

The first thing Eobard is aware of is _bleach._ Bleach and disinfectant, and the cloying smell of sickness, decay, death that is only just masked under the imposed cleanliness. A hospital.

There's the slight tang of soap, and -so faint he can barely sense it- a breath of some sort of flower. One of the mild ones. He's never really cared much for botany, and less for perfumery, so he couldn't really point out which one it is precisely. It doesn't matter. What does matter is how the soap-flower scent waxes and wanes in his nose, not the way a scent does when you've smelt it too long, but rather like it's moving around him.

A nurse?

His mouth feels dry, his head is sore, and his arm feels cold from the elbow up. A shiver runs through him, and he hears murmuring. Incoherent sounds that slowly resolve into quiet, intelligible words.

It is a nurse, because she's talking to herself as she writes something down.

Annoyance stabs through him, then, because this is such a _primitive_ era. Yes, rely on pen and paper to record medical information. Never mind the sheer errors that can arise if someone has sloppy handwriting, or if the writer makes a mistake and a later reader misinterprets their correction. Not that these people have anything better, because they don't, and will not for years yet.

He scowls, then decides to open his eyes and get a look around him.

His vision, Eobard notes, is _frustratingly_ blurry up close. Not in the sense that everything is just barely formed blobs with no discernible features, but rather, there's the faintest _fuzz_ to the edges of everything. Like looking at an ancient image file with compression artefacts.

It's _wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong._

The nurse looks up, and their eyes meet.

"Good morning, Mr Wells."

Eobard blinks, not entirely from confusion, because he knows where he is and whose skin he wears, but… It is disorienting to be called someone else's name. Still, it would be rude to not respond.

The thing, of course, about copying someone's entire _body_ is that you also get their brain structure. And all memories are, all personality is, are mappings of neurons that, when fired in a specific sequence, create certain effects and actions. Though the fact that he also retains his own self does make compelling argument for the existence of a soul, or some other metaphysical body that also retains the essence of a person.

The real point is, though, that he can access Harrison Wells' memories, use his personality, and it is truly regrettable that this man was apparently too nice to respond with much snark to being wished 'good morning' upon waking up in a hospital.

What Eobard didn't expect, though, was for the pre-programmed settings of this body's brain to take over when he woke it up to get information for his first performance.

"Where's Tess?" his voice comes out hoarse and shaky. Scared. He's not sure how this stupid brain is scared because, really, they both know what happened to Dr Morgan. And it should also be under his control, because it's _his_ brain.

The nurse grows still. Then she clicks her pen and carefully tucks it into a pocket as she replaces his chart at the foot of the bed. "Mr Wells, can you tell me what the last thing you remember is?"

He doesn't have to think at all about this one, because he knows what the last thing Wells remembered was. He was there, after all. Of course, he does have to leave out certain details, but it's not that difficult.

"I was driving…" he says, trying for even and failing miserably, _damn this body,_ "There was… something… I lost control of the car… Where's my fiancée? Where's Tess?"

Eobard sternly reminds himself that she's dead, though why he even has to do such a ridiculous thing is beyond him.

He almost misses the nurse's hesitant response when the thought flits into his mind that _You killed her._

"That's right. You were in a very bad car accident. Miss Morgan was… very severely injured by the crash."

Any fool could have seen that this woman was side-stepping the truth, dancing around it like if she just evaded the matter long enough, her poor patient might give up and go back to sleep until she could get someone else to confront unfortunate reality with him. Her attempts at diversion were, however, clumsy at best, and Eobard really had no patience for people who thought to obfuscate with partial truths and had not the wit to pull it off.

"She's dead."

Harrison Wells likely would have made that sound more like a question than the flat statement Eobard ended up making, but before he can truly consider his mistake in intonation… His eyes prickle.

No. He is _not._ This is absolutely not happening to him.

But there's no mistaking the wetness that begins to trail down his cheeks.

"Sh-she's dead. Isn't she." There, that sounds a bit better, a bit more like a man who is fearing for the worst because he can't get a straight answer, and less like a man who just murdered someone in cold blood.

Now, if he could just stop _crying_ about it, that would be lovely.

* * *

Eobard is discharged from the hospital two days later, with the diagnoses of concussion and broken heart.

The concussion he has to fake, because even without being able to tap into the speed force as far as any conscious action goes, his metabolism is still churning along at a speedster's pace. His body heals, remarkably fast and in ways a normal human can't, despite his best efforts. By lunch the day he'd woken up, his headache was gone. And he was certain if they performed any scans of his brain the day he left, they'd have found no sign of the percussive trauma he'd deliberately inflicted upon himself. 

It helps he finds, when they talk to him, examine how he acts and moves and sleeps, if he lets some of his own genuine emotions shine through. Everyone expects a man with a concussion to be a bit irritable, after all. And the fact that he has to _think_ to be Harrison Wells just supports the conclusion of traumatic brain injury, because people who've been knocked hard in the head tend to think slowly for a bit.

The broken heart, on the other hand, is not quite as fake, to his _great_ irritation.

When he forgets himself- No, that's an _awful_ way to phrase it, because he never forgets _himself._ It's more that, when he's tired, or when he's focusing too much on playing the part of Harrison Wells, when he absolutely cannot be Eobard Thawne in the least, it's like he gets shoved to the back a bit. Never fully out of control, but it's like when his anger gets the best of him. Rational thought fleeing behind instinct and _reaction._

This body chokes up or gets watery-eyed whether he wants it to or not whenever Tess is brought up, or even thought of. His stomach turns at the sight of green beans on one of his lunch trays, and he actually _likes_ green beans. (Though those were awful enough that he'd been tempted to change his mind on the matter, had the rest of the food not been equally terrible.) When he gets a visitor -some woman named Tina McGee, apparently a very close friend of Wells and Morgan-, he cannot help the smile that comes to his lips. He also can't seem to make it any less sad.

Which is all well and fine because he does have to play the part of Harrison Wells to a _convincing_ degree, but Eobard has _limits._

He doesn't think it's entirely unreasonable to expect that his body not act on its own. Although it isn't… truly doing that. It's responding to signals from his brain, after all. Except it's not responding to ones he's _choosing_ to send. It's like his brain stem has decided to freelance in being his frontal lobe for all the control he has over it at times.

It is _driving him insane._

By the day he's discharged, he's taken to shoving everything _Harrison_ as far from conscious thought as possible unless he absolutely has to access it to continue his lie. It helps, somewhat, with maintaining his sense of self and control. Mostly. And by now he's gleaned enough of the man's personality to be able to fake it to his own satisfaction.

It's not wholly convincing to Dr McGee, but she doesn't seem to question it too much. Sometimes, when he thinks she's about to, he just casually reaches up and rubs his head like he's trying to chase a headache. He's yet to be wrong about guessing her intent, either, if the way she looks guiltily away from him means much of anything.

Still, it does tell him that at some point, some point _soon,_ he will have to sit down and really get to know the brain structure he's stolen.

The thought of that is enough to make him, for the first time in _years,_ wish he could get drunk.

* * *

Dr McGee takes him 'home', because the doctor at the hospital doesn't want him driving just yet, and anyways, 'his' car is presently so much scrap. Eobard laughs drily and agrees that he doesn't want himself driving just yet either. He's recommended towards therapy, because the doctor assumes it's because the accident has left him with lingering fears and doubts.

Really, it's just because Eobard doesn't quite know how to drive cars this old. Theoretically, yes. Realistically, not well enough that he could fake it just yet.

_Harrison_ knows, of course, but he's ignoring Harrison unless he has no other choice.

It's _probably_ not helping that he's thinking like there are actually two people in this brain. There aren't. There's just him, and the neurological pathways copied from a man buried off the side of a lonely road. One person. One.

That said, it's those neurons that pick up on and alert him to the fact that they aren't headed to Wells' home. The roads are familiar, yes, but it isn't the way to 'his' apartment.

He blinks when they pull into a parking lot. What on Earth is a Big Belly Burger…? 

Eobard knows enough about this time to know that 'burger' is basically synonymous with a formed patty of ground beef. The thought of which makes this body inexplicably anticipatory. He supposes he could access a memory of what a 21st century burger tastes like, but he doesn't really care all that much. It can't possibly be too different from the turkey or vegetable ones he's used to. And both are good. Nothing he'd necessarily look forward to the prospect of eating the way his stolen neurons are, but nothing to be dreaded either.

This knowledge does little to alleviate his confusion.

Eobard turns, brows knit together as he looks at Dr McGee. Thankfully, she spares him from having to figure out what Wells might say by responding to the look alone.

"I thought you might be hungry. And since we all know hospital food sucks and you can't cook…" She trails off in that way people do when they expect the listener to know exactly how they mean to finish their sentence, and nods towards the restaurant.

There's the faintest feeling of indignation. Hm. He can work with that. Likes that better than these nerve cells running away from him. So he frowns slightly in response. "Can too."

Which, yes, _Eobard_ can cook. Not that he often does, because it's really rather difficult to actually eat enough non-processed food to meet his caloric needs on an average activity day, never mind cook all that food. Even when he's being absolutely sedentary, it's a bit of a chore. But Eobard can cook, so he files away the information that Wells cannot.

"Sorry, Harrison, but it doesn't count as cooking if the recipe is 'Put in microwave on high for 2 minutes'," McGee teases.

He grits his teeth for a second to bite down the snappish retort, because he's 79% certain by now that Wells would just laugh a comment like that off. So he takes a deep breath, and exhales an excuse for a chuckle, forcing the corner of his mouth to turn up. "That's what you think."

The woman isn't too hard to read. It's clear he didn't get the reaction quite right, by how she studies him, eyes intent whilst her face tries and fails to look relaxed and amused. Bemused would be a more accurate sentiment, because she's so clearly puzzled, trying to reconcile the man before her with the man she's known for years.

Eobard looks away first. He wonders how long the excuses of head injury, of heartbreak, will work with her. He'll probably have to find a reason to cut ties. Shame, he recalls that Dr McGee was quite intelligent in the original timeline. The mother, so to speak, of tachyon physics. He could make great use of her skills and insight in his plans… but he's not sure how he might be able to bring her on board without giving himself away, because she knows Harrison Wells so keenly.

His stomach, thankfully, breaks the silence with a gurgle.

"Let's go inside," he says, taking the excuse to remove his seatbelt and get out of the car.

He nearly shuts his fingers in the door.

Dr McGee laughs at that, though. "They aren't going to sell out before we get in there. You really need to slow down sometimes."

"You never know," Wells' mouth says before Eobard can move past the feeling of _wrong wrong wrong_ enough to respond on his own. "They might, one of these days."

" _Harrison,_ " she chuckles, fondly exasperated. "Then we'll go to a different location. Or another burger place."

When they go into the restaurant, Eobard reluctantly pokes at Wells' memories until he susses out what the man usually orders. He also strongly considers changing the order because _why_ would you put _mayonnaise_ on a perfectly good _anything?_ Except that might be suspicious, so he'll just… live. Somehow. And try not to throw up if any of that _slime_ actually touches his tongue.

He unwraps the burger slowly, still uncertain about the mayonnaise. The rest of it looks all right. The smell is… nothing to write home about, however. It honestly smells a bit like wet dog, which is immensely _off-putting._ Still, he pushes back the trepidation, because even if it's not to his personal taste, he at least has the refuge of hiding behind Harrison Wells' neural pathways to finish this thing.

He takes a cautious bite.

It's not awful. It also does not taste even remotely _like_ a burger; it tastes of grease and wet dog smell and despair. Actually, that last one might be the mayonnaise. The saving grace is really the cheese -which helps _immensely,_ even if it too doesn't taste quite like proper cheese for some reason- and the other toppings. Catsup. Catsup is something he ordinarily does without, because it has the tendency to make whatever you put it on taste like catsup and nothing else. However, in this case, that tendency is very much a redeeming feature of the condiment.

In any case, it's better than the sorry excuse for food they served at the hospital, and the least he can do is let out a quiet noise of appreciation for that fact. Dr McGee chuckles when she hears that, no suspicion in her expression at all -for once-, and teases him with how she'd have brought him take-away sooner if he'd just _told her_ how awful the food there truly was.

Eobard has the most immature urge to flip her off, but that is decidedly outside the range of acceptable responses from Harrison Wells, so he refrains. He just closes his eyes and takes another bite of the burger before he changes his mind and decides that maybe these things are disgusting after all.

* * *

The second time he stops at a Big Belly Burger, it's on his way back to Central City. This time, it's not to kill the Flash, but to create him, which is a thought that angers Eobard to no end. He honestly almost wants the speed force back just so he can travel to before he managed to act on the _brilliant_ idea to kill Barry Allen before he became the Flash, and _kick his own ass._ He should have realised that the speed force would weaken and withdraw without the original connection to it ever being created.

Unfortunately, that cannot be, so he has to settle for creating the Flash himself.

So he packs up Harrison Wells' life and moves it to Central City, where he will found S.T.A.R. Labs. A bit early, yes, but the sooner he gets the particle accelerator built, the sooner he can go _home._ The timeline is messed up enough right now that he is reasonably certain repeating enough of the major events of the original timeline should be sufficient to push it back to a mostly correct course.

Which still won't get him _home,_ just back to the right _year,_ but he can figure out how to fix that last part later. He has plenty of time, because he cannot just build the particle accelerator _now,_ even though he certainly knows exactly how to do it to get the results he wants. For one, there's no S.T.A.R. Labs. Which is a problem for every obvious reason. For two, Dr Harrison Wells is not yet a wealthy man, nor a particularly well-known scientist. There is simply no _funding_ for it. Thus, he must bide his time.

Which would not be so bad if he didn't have to move so damn _slow_ in every other facet of his life.

He could have _pushed_ this van to Central City faster if he'd just had his speed. And he wouldn't have had to suffer through the noise that this backwards time calls 'music', either.

Eobard growls and hits the button to turn the radio off with a little more force than strictly necessary. If he could guarantee maintaining the right vibrational frequency, he'd shove his hand into the radio and shred its internals just to vent his frustrations. Except he can't, and he'd rather not get stuck. He's gotten stuck before.

It's not pleasant, to say the least.

He sighs, gaze flicking over to the exit information signs. It's been about two hours since he left Starling, since he last ate. And even if his loss of the speed force has taken his appetite down several notches, because he can't move any faster than a normal human 95% of the time… His metabolism is still eager to remind him that it hasn't changed much and he should still be taking in around 10,000 calories a day.

He enters the restaurant intending to order a turkey burger, he really does. He's not enduring beef again if he doesn't have to. But as he glances over the menu, notes the turkey option, notes that even in this otherwise barbaric time they have veggie patties… Well. The thing he ordered last time -what was it, the number 2 combo?- does tempt him.

It's really not _bad._ He doesn't feel like he's wasted money on it, or that he should have ordered something else. It's still… weird. And he has _got_ to remember no mayonnaise next time, honestly.

* * *

By the time S.T.A.R. Labs is up and running, Harrison Wells already has something of a reputation amongst his employees. A reputation gained from being at the construction site as often as he was able amongst the other duties of being the owner and CEO of a new scientific enterprise. Gained by often being the first one to start the day, and not ending it until well past midnight.

There's some gossip about how he does it. Well, not so much how does he stay awake all those hours, because by now he's taken to carrying a travel mug with him everywhere. Everyone assumes it is filled with coffee. Usually, it's just water. Sometimes it really is coffee, but honestly, with his metabolism caffeine does fuck all for him. And a poorly hydrated man is a tired man.

But, no, the real gossip is when does he refill it and where does he get the coffee. At least no one has been dumb enough to ask how he could afford his supposed coffee addiction, because he'd feel obligated to sack them for gross stupidity.

Part and parcel of that reputation and its attendant gossip is, of course, his eating habits. It's really not uncommon for him to be found either with an energy bar or, of all things, a burger, when people catch him eating. He tries to not let this happen overly much, because it would be suspicious if people figured out how many calories he was actually putting away each day, but it happens enough times that one night a month after they're officially open, his secretary ends up dropping a bag from Big Belly on his desk and telling him he is not allowed out of his office until he finishes the contents of that bag.

The more Eobard works towards recreating the Flash, the more he can feel the speed force. It's still barely there, hard to reach for and harder to grasp, but when his annoyance at the order flares, he feels it prickle at his skin. Which is why he's taken to using a travel mug. Interacting with the speed force seems to generate tachyons in this time. And tachyons have a _wretched_ habit of making liquids _float._

To be _fair,_ they were still getting shipments of important equipment in. And _someone_ in Shipping and Receiving who was about to be so _very_ fired had _dropped_ a _forklift_ onto a very expensive server. So he felt he was well within his rights to yell at anyone who so much as _breathed_ wrong.

He absolutely was not hungry at all, but he did want to leave his office at some point tonight, if only so he could get his usual four hours sleep in a proper bed. And he'd hired Miss Groves for a _reason._ That reason being she was _terrifyingly_ efficient at managing his schedule and keeping him on track with the parts of founding a scientific laboratory that he loathed. (Namely, everything that didn't involve him being down in a lab working.)

She extended that terrifying efficiency to just about everything else she did, too. He sincerely hoped that if she ended up a metahuman, she chose to use her powers for good. Because he did not think the world was ready for her supervillain career, and at this point in time he did _not_ need actual competition.

So he opened the damn bag that had been forced upon him… and smiled, slightly. She was rather observant, another reason he'd hired her. And apparently she even took note of his favourite burger.

Eobard takes a bite, sighing in contentment. Perfect as always. Well, to be fair, he'd by this point experienced far better quality burgers. But there was something to be said for inexpensive consistency. It really was a perfectly reliable burger option. It also did not threaten his bank account overly much.

By the time Harrison finishes the burger and starts on the fries, he's in a remarkably better mood. Not that he isn't still going to fire that man in Receiving. That guy is getting fired so hard he'll leave a crater at the unemployment office. But he supposes the rest of his employees can live without fear.

For now.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, it's Caitlin who brings him something to eat. A thin, wry smile plays at the corner of his lips as he notes what it is. Is he really so transparent? Perhaps in some ways, yes.

A part of him wants to scoff and inform _her_ that cows are extinct when he's from, but that would be pointless. Because they're not extinct yet, even if Harrison Wells has a burger habit that is likely a major contributor to the future extinction of domesticated cattle. Also, one does not consume as many burgers as he has over the past fifteen years without actually _liking_ the damn things.

So Harrison just nods his thanks and settles in to eat as comfortably as he can manage in the small cell. It's odd. He's gotten so used to eating around the others. Obviously he never made a habit of taking meals around them often, but… Apparently he did so often enough that he now misses it. Misses passing several bags over to Barry and chiding him for not even tasting the food. Misses sharing his fries. Misses listening to Cisco gripe about how they can't seem to remember 'no pickles' half the time. Misses Caitlin despairing for his cholesterol levels.

Harrison focuses on the burger instead, bites into it and doesn't care that it's a bit cold from its travels. It really is the perfect last meal for the proverbial road, because it's not something he'll be able to get back in his original time.

…

_Actual_ time.

_Home,_ if you want to be _precise_ about it.

He scowls at the burger. It's just _food._ Nothing worth giving up fifteen years of plans and hard work for. He could probably find some stored genome somewhere and _clone_ some damn cows. Eobard puts the burger aside and leans his head against the wall of his cell. He stares down at the bag, really notices the way the edges of it blur just _slightly,_ just enough to remind him that he is appreciably hyperopic and does actually need glasses, if only to properly read a computer screen or do other detail work.

The first thing he'll do when he gets home, though, is figure out how to get his original body back. There isn't really any point in going home if no one recognises him, no one knows who he is. And then where would he be? He wouldn't be home, wouldn't be the one place he wanted to be more than anything else.

It's interesting when he thinks about it, how he'd been so incredibly dysphoric at first. And now he doesn't particularly care beyond the inconvenience of none of his family, his friends, knowing who he is. Eobard vaguely wonders when that changed, because he can't quite guess at even the year he'd finally settled into this shape. He can say only with the vaguest of certainty when the intrusive thoughts finally stopped for good. And that had been only a few months ago. Though Harrison wasn't entirely sure if they'd ceased, or if he'd had other things on his mind and thus never paid them attention any more.

He'd been too caught up in being a part of Team Flash. Basking in the warmth and affection, even as he'd known he never deserved it. There were moments when, truly, he'd have blown his cover if it meant keeping Barry safe, keeping him alive, and he wouldn't have regretted a thing.

He almost throws the damn burger against the opposite wall, because he refuses to be sentimental now. And it's that damn burger's fault he's even thinking about the fake bonds he'd forged with the Flash and his friends, thinking of them as anything but the necessary manipulations they had been so he could get _home._

_Keep telling yourself that._

Eobard scowls, shoves that part of his personality away to a corner of his mind where he doesn't have to listen to it, tells it to shut up. But he's never been particularly good about keeping his mouth shut when he feels like he has something important that needs to be heard. So that part of his brain keeps chattering away, so to speak.

_You can tell yourself that you feel nothing but hate, but it's not the truth._

Except it is _too_ the truth. He hates the Flash, feels nothing but indifference for the other ghosts of this time.

_Mm. Sure you do. That's why you said Cisco was like a son to you, right? Because you don't care._

Eobard hits his head lightly against the wall, tries to cut off his own train of thoughts with a vicious bite of his burger. It doesn't sit well in his mouth, all at once bone dry and too greasy to want to swallow.

_Then again.... Your ticket home is Barry saving his mom. Can't get back to the right timeline if she's dead, after all. And you know what's going to happen to this timeline once she survives._

He exhales sharply, squeezes his eyes shut against the sharp burning wet gathering in them. Yes, he knows full well what happens once Barry fixes things, once he goes home. The wormhole will not close. It will open into a singularity, a black hole that will consume this world and this fragment of time until nothing is left but his memories. Because time abhors a paradox.

_They're all going to die because of you. All these people. An entire world._

It feels hollow to remind himself that technically, they'll just have never existed in the way they do now. That his actions won't really kill them. And he can't even begin to tell himself that it wouldn't matter anyways, because they're all just ghosts from his perspective.

Because it would, oddly. It would matter, in some ways, to him.

_It's not too late to stop this._

Except it was too late years from now, when he first travelled back in time, years ago when he'd buried that knife in Nora Allen's heart and murdered Tess Morgan by crashing a car. No, he tells that quiet optimism, it was already far too late. For all his intellect, all his genius… he is at a loss as to how he could ever make any of this _right._ The most he is able to offer was a chance for Barry to save his mother, prevent all the awful things he had caused over the past fifteen years. And even that has terrible consequences.

Harrison pushes those thoughts away, because there was nothing for them. He could not fix this, could not truly erase the full extent of the mistakes he'd made. He forced his mind to more trivial things, to think of the people he'd left in the future and how good it would be to see them once more.

When Barry shows up as he finishes his meal, he has to dredge up every last bit of old, worn-out hatred Eobard Thawne had felt for the man this Flash would never become just to survive their conversation.

And as he watches Barry leave, it is all he can do to _only_ think that he'd certainly miss the food here.


End file.
